Glassware 2.0 Azure Testing Update
Bad news.. it actually doesn't work as fully claimed. In fact it seems to be just a demo.
Here are my findings:
1) You cannot join a domain with glassware. In fact, you can't do much of anything with the containers. RDP into host VM does not work, remote Powershell is not setup, workarounds I have tried by uploading my own software to configure the host OS have been futile (though not exhaustive yet). Their claims that it "supports active directory integration" are surface level. They support IMPORTING active directory users into their system, but it is not INTEGRATED with AD. Ie. NTLM/Kerberos auth is not going to happen. Which makes technical sense considering that users don't log into containers using their AD credentials.
2) The license key granted has the key "AZURE-DEMO" and I have 10,000 user licenses (that I have not paid any sort of premium for).
3) Connect via HTML5 is not available.
4) Indeed 16-bit applications don't work.
This also might explain why they don't want anyone reviewing what they've made available.
BUT, to answer your question...
"<<The companies who win from Sphere as it stands now will be the shops that utilize a lot of quasi-legacy data intensive software like financial, accounting, and project management systems. I.e. fat-clients that were developed 10-20 years ago but can still run on Win7 & 10.>>
Re this final comment in your post, can you name any software vendor that is still selling fat client software?"
Yes - there are tons of them.. TONS. You just won't hear about them every day. Every utility company, O&G, T&D, telecom, railroad, hospital, call center, financial institution, etc. etc. has a whole fleet of them for project management, accounting, financials, customer mgmt, fleet mgmt, issue tracking, etc. etc. Here are just a few big vendors: Accenture, Oracle (via acquisitions), Huron, Epic, ZmFs, Fiserv, in house solutions, .. the list is very much endless and I know of a few smaller ones (~250 employee firms) I omitted. You might think these big $ companies are high tech but quite frankly they're not. They have been struggling to move their **IT systems to newer platforms, and have been forking over millions and millions to unsuccessfully do so.
The only light that Sphere has for next earnings is the degree of success over their professional services engagements. Tons of fog between now and then though.
